Group wants Quebec to add the history of residential schools to curriculum

Maris Jacobs, left, and Kakaionstha Deer stand by the waters edge at the Onake Paddling Club, in Kahnawake on Friday June 19, 2015. They are part of The Foundation for the Compulsory Study, a Montreal-based organization that is working to urge the province to include genocide studies, including residential schools, in high school curriculum. Pierre Obendrauf / Montreal Gazette

Marianopolis College student Maris Jacobs, a Mohawk from Kahnawake, left her Montreal secondary school wishing she and her classmates had learned at least as much about the cultural genocide enacted on her ancestors who were forced to attend Canada’s residential schools as they did about the genocide in the Second World War.

“You talk about genocide and people say, ‘Oh yeah, the Holocaust,’ but nobody really thinks about residential schools, about how they happened,” said the Sacred Heart High School graduate.

A Montreal-based organization is seeking to change that. The Foundation for the Compulsory Study of Genocide is working to urge the province to include genocide studies, including the dark history of residential schools, in Quebec high school curriculum.

Members of the foundation recently met with Catherine Dupont, director of general youth education at Quebec’s Ministry of Education, to persuade the government to make mandatory the teaching of residential schools in high school.

But the meeting did not go well for the foundation.

“The impression they left me with was that it’s not up to them, it’s up to the teachers,” foundation creator Heidi Berger said after the meeting. “They’re given directives and it’s up to each individual teacher to pursue it themselves. As she said to me clearly many times during the meeting, ‘We’re not there as spies to go into schools to make sure they’re teaching it.’”

The foundation had hoped that Quebec would follow British Columbia, where students as young as 10 will soon be taught about residential schools.

Quebec’s education ministry maintains that it is leaving the decision up to teachers.

“The compulsory programs do not prescribe any specific knowledge that must be acquired concerning residential schools,” wrote ministry of education spokesperson Pascal Ouellet in an email. “However, the programs give teachers enough flexibility regarding the historical knowledge that may be taught. Textbook publishers have the same leeway with respect to the materials they produce.”

Kakaionstha Deer was sent to Spanish Girl’s School, a residential school in Spanish, Ont., from her home in Kahnawake when she was six years old. For Deer, her story, like the thousands of others, must be taught.

“They need to know that the country that they’re living in was taking part in this for over 150 years, and it’s still going on,” said Deer, now 77. “You can talk about genocide in the past, that’s okay — but it’s still going on. I call it a living genocide.”

Cultural genocide, for Deer, lasted well beyond the immediate deaths of those estimated 3,000 to 4,000 who died at the schools. The estimated 150,000 First Nations children who attended residential schools across Canada were all subjected to a program that sought to eliminate their culture and language.

“When you talk about genocide, people die,” she said. “When you talk about cultural genocide, you have people living it, a living death.”

Deer says she was sexually assaulted by a nun while at Spanish, and gives lectures to McGill University medical students planning to work with First Nations patients about the effects of residential schools.

Though more teachers now take the initiative to teach residential schools than they once did, the subject still gets short shrift in comparison to other mass tragedies.

Jacobs studied residential schools once at Sacred Heart when she chose to study it as part of an elective.

Also concerning for Jacobs and other First Nations students is the perceived light treatment the seriousness of Canada’s 150-year policy to assimilate First Nations children gets.

“A lot of people don’t even register that it was a part of a genocide,” said Jacobs. “Students that I’ve heard talking about it before say it doesn’t seem to be as big of a deal as other things that have happened throughout time, even though it’s just as important and has had as much of an impact on an entire culture as other wars and genocides had on other people.”

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission will likely change that sentiment.

Berger had hoped Quebec Liberal premier Philippe Couillard’s recent statements agreeing with former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin in labelling the residential school policy as cultural genocide would help her cause.

“I was hoping to find a little point of entry with them where they would say, ‘Let’s see if we can work around this,’ but basically we didn’t get that,” said Berger.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s recently released initial report recommends provinces review curriculum and develop age-appropriate materials on residential schools for all levels of school.

The foundation’s goal is to expand on residential schools to teach a general course specifically on genocide.

Berger’s late mother, Ann Kazimirski, spent her life speaking about her Holocaust-survival experience, and she founded her organization to pressure federal and provincial governments to ensure future generations are educated on how atrocities begin and how they can be prevented.

“Having students understand what leads to genocide,” Berger said. “It’s not enough to tell them that this genocide happened. They have to know how it happened, what led to it. And that’s what’s missing.”

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